Tornado in New Orleans 2/13/07

My son Zac just called to tell me his New Orleans neighborhood was hit by a tornado at 3:30 AM last night. The whole house was shaking, a couple of windows shattered, transformers were exploding outside, and the porch railing was blasted apart by some flying debris. Apparently, his house fared much better than those of many neighbors. At first light, he and his roommate went out as did many others to find the streets covered with broken phone poles that had snapped in half and a swarm of electrical, phone, and cable wiring weaving through the streets like a high-tech spider web. In five hours, all the neighbors had cleared the streets. Zac helped various people board up their shattered windows. He helped one man remove valuable doors and windows from the two walls that had been blown entirely off his house. Others are missing their roofs, while nobody has electricity or landlines for phones. Zac used his cell phone to tell his employers at Habitat for Humanity that he would not be coming to work today. Speaking only partly as his dad, I think Habitat should have all their workers out in that neighborhood (a portion of Uptown) for the next day or so and count it toward their work hours. Apparently some of the Habitat volunteers who heard what Zac (their supervisor) and his roommate were up to, came out and lent a hand today as well. New Orleans seems like a magnet for natural disasters. I'm so proud that Zac knew instinctively what he needed to be doing today.